Recent Comments:
Windows Marketplace's newest anti-piracy measures already thwarted {Engadget}
Nov 13th 2009 12:46PM Piracy is still a factor on the App Store - but you have to ALSO jailbreak your phone to use pirated applications, which limits how many people can actually pirate. So as a developer, I consider this the best world - casual users really can't pirate, whereas hard-core people that were going to pirate anyway can. You cannot stop piracy totally, you can only contain it.
Furthermore as a developer it's really easy to check and see if your app is running on a Jailbroken phone, and if it has been pirated. The fact is that developers choose to do nothing about that generally, because piracy is not affecting actual sales much.
Zune HD review {Engadget}
Sep 18th 2009 4:43PM One thing I noticed from a few of the videos, is that it seems way to prone to make a selection when you are simply trying to scroll (using the main menu the reviewer would often accidentally select something, and then there was the browser test where he was just trying to scroll but instead hit the image...)
I would have watched more videos to see if it was more of a trend, but after two unskippable Cotton advertisements playing after the Engadget videos were over I had to abandon the review altogether.
MacBook Pro 17-inch first hands-on (update: video added) {Engadget}
Jan 7th 2009 4:59PM And if you don't add 4GB more or an SSD, then it's only $3200 or so (depending on what other options you add)
Very few people will need 8GB or an SSD, those that do will not mind the extra cost.
BlackBerry 9000 in the wild {Engadget Mobile}
Mar 30th 2008 4:28PM The key with a touchscreen is that if the screen is bright enough you do not see fingerprints when the screen is on. I have not cleaned my iPhone screen more than about three times since I bought it last year. Yes it gets fingerprints, and no they don't do anything.
It's not like the Blackberry screen has no fingerprints either. If you pull it from a pocket, purse, or holster you cannot tell me your fingers never, ever brush the screen by accident.
BlackBerry 9000 in the wild {Engadget Mobile}
Mar 30th 2008 4:04PM You do not have to be without the iPhone for more than a few moments due to service. If your iPhone has to go in for repair, you get a loaner phone for a small fee (I think $20) while Apple fixes your real one - they take the SIM out of your current phone, but it in the loaner and when your fixed phone is mailed back they instruct how how to re-insert the sim.
The iPhone data is not held on the SIm, but then that's why you sync the phone with a computer regularly - right?
I agree that the iPhone is pretty durable. I have dropped it onto fairly hard surfaces (wood floor and thin carpet over concrete at a gym) and the iPhone is unharmed.
iPhone developer rejection letter mass mailing {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Mar 14th 2008 3:30PM I got the "not yet" letter, I also applied as soon as was possible and was previously a registered developer (in fact previously a paid ADC member, though I had since let that lapse).
iPhone developer rejection letter mass mailing {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Mar 14th 2008 3:28PM Even if you had to wait until June to be accepted, by then you could have a pretty polished app using only the simulator, and have something final ready to ship within a week of getting your cert. At least that's true for most applications, anything making advanced use of the accelerometers would of course need to operate on the phone...
iPhone developer rejection letter mass mailing {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Mar 14th 2008 3:19PM I got "The Letter" too (registered using the name of a small company I formed some time ago). The thing is, that it's important to remember that's it's not a rejection letter so much as "There are too many of you for us to handle right now, we'll let you in as we can". I think they'll eventually let everyone in who applied, the real question is the timing.
HD DVD camp issues sad little response to Netflix, Best Buy snubs {Engadget}
Feb 12th 2008 2:11PM The coffin was already nailed shut some time ago, now they are just pounding stakes in the body to be 100% sure.
Hands-on with Sigma's DP1 {Engadget}
Feb 3rd 2008 1:37AM First of all, lots of people are forgetting this is a 28mm equivalent lens - 16mm in reality. So if you are using a 28mm on most modern DSLR's, you are really shooting something more like a 42mm lens! That means the DP-1 has both a wider field of view, and an ability to handhold in lower light than people seem to be expecting.
The people that note the GR-D and similar ilk have an f/2.8 lens ignore that the sensor size of the DP-1 is six times larger than that of any other P&S camera around (including the GR-D). That is where the physics of the situation come into play, an f/2.8 lens for a sensor that large would be much more massive and put the DP1 out of reach of being pocketable. And if a camera s not pocketable - why not just bring a DSLR? For those that must have a bit more zoom as a possibility, either accept some further cropping or use the age-old technique of the tele adaptor such as those used on video cameras today.
That leads right into the discussion of image quality and the 14MP claim. You see a lot of talk when the Foveon sensor comes up that really layering the sensors does nothing, and thus the resolution is really 4.6MP. But that ignores the countless reviews of older Foveon bearing cameras like the Sigma SD-10 that show a sensor in that camera with even fewer pixels than the DP-1 is pulling at least 6MP of detail (and somewhere beyond), which means the DP-1 with a 14MP Foveon sensor therefore has significantly more detail than a 6MP camera would... so the fundamental conclusion reached by doubters is trivially shown to be wrong by working examples. It may not quite be 14MP in bayer terms, but to claim it's a 5MP camera in bayer terms is even more wrong.
To understand why this is you need to realize that the Bayer sensor really holds a variable amount of detail from any given scene whereas a Foveon camera captures a fixed level of detail regardless of color changes in a scene. An excellent source to understand that better is this comparison of the Sigma SD-14 (roughly the same sensor used in the DP1-1) with the Canon 5-D:
http://www.ddisoftware.com/sd14-5d/
Lastly, for those that don't think nature holds rapidly changing color data - trees against a sky? Hair against colored material? The world is full of sudden change and is of a fractal nature, where change repeats on many levels and different scales in the same scene. It's nice to have a camera that represents the change in colors and detail consistently no matter if the change occurs over many pixels, or just one.
